Waiting for the UFOs

Since I last commented on the Chinese balloon that was shot down over the ocean off the coast of South Carolina, three more flying objects - all of them unidentified - have been shot down.

Two of them were spied near the Arctic Coast - one near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, the other on the Canadian side of the border over the Yukon Territory.   The third was over Lake Huron between Michigan and Ontario.  Both the U.S. and Canada are working to see just exactly what these objects are, though recovering anything from the Arctic Coast and the Great Lakes in February can be a challenge.

It was obvious that the objects were not airplanes, and that they needed to be taken out, thanks to the intelligence supplied to President Biden and Canadian Prime MInister Justin Trudeau.  I feel more confident in President Biden's leadership than I would have if a certain blow-dried phenomenon who became famous in the 1980s were sitting in the White House.  And no, I'm not talking about Donald Trump.  I'm talking about Gary Hart.

In a 1984 Democratic presidential debate held in Atlanta two days before the Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses - the same debate in which former Vice President Walter Mondale said to Hart, a U.S. Senator from Colorado,  that he had seen his new ideas and was reminded of the fast-food slogan "Where's the beef?" - moderator and NBC News icon John Chancellor asked the candidates a hypothetical question about what they would do as President if an unidentified passenger plane from a Communist country - Czechoslovakia, Chancellor said - flew in American airspace and the pilots resisted efforts by U.S. air defense to be identified.  (A Korean passenger jet had been shot down by the Soviet Union in 1983.)  Hart's answer should have disqualified him from serving as President long before his dalliance with a Miami model did.  Walter Mondale gave a more intelligent answer, recognizing the high unlikelihood of the scenario that Chancellor laid out, but it was then-Ohio senator John Glenn, a former Marine pilot and an astronaut who had orbited the earth thrice in 1962, who provided the best answer to the question.  You can see the whole exchange in the video below.  

 

I'm sorry, I know he was Martin O'Malley's mentor, but thank God Gary Hart became irrelevant before Communism and Czechoslovakia did.  As for Glenn, alas, he would be out of the 1984 presidential campaign within a week after this debate.

Mondale's Wendy's-inspired sound-bite critique of Hart's "New Ideas" agenda overshadowed this segment of the debate, so few if any Hart supporters caught this embarrassing moment, but it still survives as evidence that a Hart administration was not the answer to America's problems.  This debate, incidentally, happened to occur 17½ years to the day before al-Qaeda brought down the World Trade Center towers with hijacked airplanes.  If Hart had been President in 2001 and even if his solution to identifying airplane pilots had been possible, the Air Force would theoretically have let the planes go because the pilots were wearing red bandannas instead of military uniforms. 

Transport Is a No-Go?

President Obama just came out with a wonderful idea on how to create more jobs and get the economy moving, the very sort of idea Chris Matthews has been calling for on MSNBC - spend more money on transportation infrastructure, creating what Matthews calls "the smell of construction." Obama wants to spend $50 billion on upgrading America's passenger rail network, highways, and airport runways and pay for it by closing tax loopholes. Now who could possibly be against spending money to create more job and improve America's transportation network?

Oh, right. . . .

John Boehner, of course, has slammed the proposal as more government spending that does nothing to stimulate the private sector - except provide contracting opportunities for the privately owned companies that would actually build all this stuff, though you won't hear Boehner admit that. The right-wing New York Post, on its front page today, lampooned Obama as a pothole President as dismissed his latest proposal as another government spending spree.

You know, back when Congress passed the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act in 1991, Republicans were against a lot of items in that law. Many congressional Republicans were opposed to more mass transit spending, and President George Bush did not want to commit a lot of money to Amtrak. They were for more spending on highways. They argued in favor of more highway spending to allow Americans the ability to travel where they wanted and when they wanted by car. Of course, people mostly use they cars to get to places they have to go to - like work. But at least in 1991, Republicans were at least for something, not simply saying no to the Democratic congressional majority of the time. Now they don't even want to spend more money on highways, and they don't want to spend more money on aviation either.

What's going to happen when Interstate 75, which runs through Boehner's district, starts falling apart? What would be wrong with the proposed high-speed rail line that would serve the Cincinnati area, where Boehner is from, adding more jobs to his district? Boehner apparently wants to become Speaker of the House first before he answers those questions.